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Friday, June 29, 2012

Asteroid Hunters Announce First Private Deep Space Mission

Humans couldn't stop an asteroid even if they did spot an incoming one. Extraterrestrials, those beings that don't exist for most of the people on earth control what happens to playpen Earth.

Nevertheless, private enterprise will get a peek of "other" things that are flying around the solar system and near the earth. But private enterprise is another illusion, government and military will have full control of what goes on in space and what people will see and know about. The government and the military are controlled by Extraterrestrials, oh the horror. No worry, few will ever believe that.

Asteroids
could be heading for Earth right now, and the world should not
have to live in fear. At least that's the message of a group of scientists and
former astronauts working on the issue. They announced plans today to launch the
first privately funded deep space mission in history, a space telescope that would make sure the
coast is clear for us.

The SENTINEL mission, announced by the
B612 Foundation,
would send a telescope into orbit around the sun in order to track small to
mid-sized asteroids that could threaten Earth. NASA already works with a network
of astronomers to track the most dangerous near-Earth asteroids, those more than
two thirds of a mile across. They say they believe they have already identified
nearly 90 percent of those deadly space rocks.

However, there is very little data on an
estimated 500 million smaller objects that could do us harm - like whatever
exploded over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908, leveling over 800 miles of
forest. The chairman and CEO of the B612 Foundation, former astronaut Ed Lu,
says this is a problem. He flew on the space shuttle, the International Space
Station and Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"We've identified and mapped only about one
percent of these asteroids to date." Lu said at a press conference. "During its
5.5-year mission survey time, Sentinel will discover and track half a
million Near Earth Asteroids, creating a dynamic map that will provide the
blueprint for future exploration of our solar system, while protecting the
future of humanity on Earth."

Don't expect that dynamic map anytime soon. Launch of the Sentinel telescope
is targeted for 2017 or 2018 - if the project, which would cost several hundred
million of dollars, is able to find funding.
The B612 group is optimistic. A press release issued by the foundation said,
"Advances in space technology, including advances in infrared sensing and
on-board computing, as well as low-cost launch system, have opened up a new era
in exploration where private organizations can now carry out grand and audacious
space missions previously only possible by governments."
The B612 Foundation, based in Mountain View, Calif., is named after the home
asteroid of the Earth-visiting prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little
Prince." It was originally founded with a focus on deflecting a potential
incoming asteroid. Ideas studied include sending an intercepting spacecraft, but
none have been tested.

The group has since shifted its focus to
this project, which will seek to identify asteroids rather than destroy them.
However, the original mission is not far from their minds.

According to Rusty Schweickart, an Apollo
astronaut and Chairman Emeritus of B612, "The nice thing about asteroids is that
once you've found them and once you have a good solid orbit on them you can
predict a hundred years ahead of time whether there is a likelihood of an impact
with the Earth."